Keyword: authorondrugs

Bill Bennett, a great American and a great Republican was all over television promoting his new book Going to Pot co-written with Robert A. White. This is a topic I have followed for years and previously written about so I thought I would read the book and hope for an interview with Dr. Bennett. I was unable to land the big fish, but did interview his co-writer for an hour discussing the issue of whether the legalization of marijuana should continue. I have previously written that the experiment of legalization should go forward in Colorado and Washington and let us...

http://media.salon.com/2015/05/hillary_warren_de_blasio.jpgEarlier this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with a gaggle of bored reporters and some boldfaced names in the progressive movement, unveiled a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” Much like the media event that accompanied its unveiling, the agenda is supposed to be understood as a kind of 21st-century, liberal version of the storied “Contract with America,” the PR stunt that, as legend (erroneously) has it, rocketed Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to power after the 1994 midterm elections. As my colleague Joan Walsh reported on Thursday, this backward-looking attempt to lay out a...

Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged divers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. ...]

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog With help from 80 years of self-described â€śprogressives,â€ť Obama is now waging the biggest war against medical marijuana of any president inÂ history Anyone who has been following the self-described â€śprogressiveâ€ť politicians since FDR should not be surprised at Obamaâ€™s war against medical marijuana.Obamaâ€™s war against medical marijuana is a direct result of the policies of the self-described â€śprogressivesâ€ť in the White House, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court, going all the way back to FDRâ€™s New Deal.During the Great Depression, while millions of Americans were hungry, the self-described â€śprogressivesâ€ť who controlled the federal government passed...

Worrying about teen drinking and drug use has kept many a parent up at night. With marijuana becoming increasingly available and legal in some parts of the country, the question has taken on new urgency: If teens are going to experiment, which is safer, booze or pot? "The first answer always has to be neither," Dr. Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, told CBS News. But then he acknowledges they're not exactly equivalent -- and he considers alcohol much more dangerous. Carroll wrote a provocative piece for the New York Times exploring what's known...

Today I want to consider the outlook for bitcoin. 2014 was its worst year on record. It fell by 67%, from $800 to $320 a coin. In doing so, it beat the likes of the Russian rouble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, to the dubious honour of being the world’s worst-performing currency. You know what the world’s best-performing currency was by the way? Nope, not the US dollar, but the Somali shilling. Yup. It surprised me too. Anyway, back to bitcoin… The bursting of the bitcoin bubble So far, 2015 has not been any better than 2014 for bitcoin. At one...

One, and only one, candidate, Barack Obama, caught the X-factor and improbably got himself nominated and elected, and re-elected, president. Another improbable candidate could catch it again.What is that X-factor? How does it upend things?Peace and personal security continued to flourish in 2014 and are likely to continue into 2015 and beyond. This is important news. It also is news the news media can ill afford to report. But voters sense it.Two of our greatest public intellectuals, Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack, provide a defining Â“state of the worldÂ” summation in Slate.com inThe World Is Not Falling Apart. The evidence...

Canada’s largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity. In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores. “Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults,” said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH. “Canada’s...

One unexpected benefit of medical marijuana legislation appears to be a decrease in painkiller overdoses, perhaps because some chronic pain patients are turning to cannabis instead of powerful opioid drugs. In states with laws legalizing medical marijuana, new research shows there are nearly 25 percent fewer deaths from painkiller overdoses. Opioid painkiller overdoses are a growing problem nationwide. More than 16,500 Americans died of opioid drug overdoses in 2010, and the numbers continue to rise. Although a casual relationship hasn’t been proven, there appears to be a significant association between marijuana legislation and a fall in overdose deaths. Researchers from...

Racial disparities tend to exist where one doesn't expect them. Situations provoke them to appear, and — if we're willing — we take notice and act. For decades, social justice advocates have referenced the racial disparity in citations and arrests for marijuana. liberal blah, blah . . Ending the war on marijuana won't end racial disparity in Oregon, but it would diminish it. Criminalizing marijuana allows racial inequality to fester. We can't reduce racial disparity where we don't know it exists, nor when we lack practical solutions. In the case of marijuana arrests, we have both. Isn't it responsible and...

“I think that a new, repugnant form of fascism is emerging with notable strength…The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this (Israeli) government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people?” (Fidel Castro, August, 5, 2014) “Who cares, what that senile ZOMBIE Castro says!” strikes me as a reasonable retort from many readers. “Unfortunately,” I’m forced to answer. “Many otherwise reasonable care very much what Fidel Castro says.” Take Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu: “The remarks attributed to Castro demonstrate his deep understanding...

America’s first foray into rolling back prohibition 2.0 is barely underway, and already marijuana prices have dropped low enough to convince some cartel farmers in Mexico to abandon the crop. Mere months after two US states legalized marijuana sales, five Nobel Prize-winning economists released a UN report recommending that countries end their war on drugs. It would seem they were onto something. But in order to further decrease drug-trade violence in so-called producer states, the US first needs to legalize marijuana, but then also the US must stop using the UN to pressure producer countries into supply-based drug prohibition. Latin...

Since Colorado voters legalized pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged divers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, we’ve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first...

Have you been following the news about Obamacare? The Affordable Care Act has receded from the front page, but information about how it’s going keeps coming in — and almost all the news is good. Indeed, health reform has been on a roll ever since March, when it became clear that enrollment would surpass expectations despite the teething problems of the federal website. What’s interesting about this success story is that it has been accompanied at every step by cries of impending disaster. At this point, by my reckoning, the enemies of health reform are 0 for 6. That is,...

There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won't advance if legislators act like seat-warmers. When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party. Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor's loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single,...

President Obama’s instincts about Iraq and Syria have been sound from the beginning: Greater U.S. engagement probably cannot make things better but certainly can make them worse, both for the people of the region and for our national interests. Obama’s only mistake was to buy, for a time, the notion that Bush’s troop surge had miraculously healed ancient divisions and made the dream of a pluralist democracy still possible. There are aspects of Obama’s foreign policy that I question. His heavy reliance on drone strikes may create as many terrorists as it eliminates. He should have realized that the National...

... What is needed from Washington is not a heroic exertion of American military power but rather a sustained effort to engage with allies, isolate enemies, support free markets and democratic values and push these positive trends forward. The Obama administration is, in fact, deeply internationalist — building on alliances in Europe and Asia, working with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, isolating adversaries and strengthening the global order that has proved so beneficial to the United States and the world since 1945. ... A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign...

When it comes to Obama-era scandals, the American Right’s predominant emotion is frustration — a frustration that causes hypertension levels usually seen only in Cubs fans and the unfortunates hired to do PR for Lindsay Lohan and Shia LeBoeuf... --snip-- Why is this happening? Ironically, the mainstream media heavyweights may feel liberated from the responsibility of covering Obama administration malfeasances because of the existence of the alternative conservative media that have arisen over the past 20 years — talk radio, Fox News, and multiple websites...

Former Army Gen. David Petraeus , who has traditionally stayed away from political endorsements, appears to be eager to support a Hillary Clinton candidacy, a new book alleges. “She’d make a tremendous President,” the former commander and CIA director reportedly says in the new book “HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. “Like a lot of great leaders, her most impressive qualities were most visible during tough times,” Petraeus adds. The comments mark an interesting departure for Petraeus, who, when it comes to politics, has typically remained quiet. The book, to be...

Did you know that financial institutions all over the world are warning that we could see a “mega default” on a very prominent high-yield investment product in China on January 31st? We are being told that this could lead to a cascading collapse of the shadow banking system in China which could potentially result in “sky-high interest rates” and “a precipitous plunge in credit“. In other words, it could be a “Lehman Brothers moment” for Asia. And since the global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, that would be very bad news for the United States as...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Don't believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud. In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government. Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to...

As the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, Andy Pudzer, CEO of conjoined fast-food chains Carl's Jr and Hardee's, went on Fox News to tell Megyn Kelly that President Obama is flat-out "wrong" in thinking that health-care reform has no widespread effect on the job market, claiming that employers, himself included, are overwhelmingly choosing to hire part-time employees to avoid paying for benefits. It's baffling that companies continue to admit their preference for hiring more part-time employees, rather than paying for health care for those working 40 hours a week. Here, Pudzer helpfully spells out his house rules. He tells...

“Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law. A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House. The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a...

In the short time since Pope Francis became leader of the Catholic Church, his every move has been scrutinized for signs of what his plans could be for his rule. And while his focus on austerity and the world’s poor has excited many who thought the Church was too out of touch with reality, traditionalist Catholics have been devastated. Francis’ decision to wash the feet of two girls, including a Muslim, during a traditional Holy Thursday ritual “has become something of the final straw,” writes the Associated Press. For traditionalists, it was a clear sign that Francis has no...

On Tuesday, March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry. But major American corporations have already heard the arguments—and in their own way, decided it's OK. Beginning in 2002, a leading gay-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, began systematically rating corporate America's commitment to gay rights. The effort was born in large part out of frustration with the political process.

...First, and most important, is focusing on the economic concerns of working-and middle-class Americans, many of whom now regard the Republican Party as beholden to “millionaires and billionaires” and as wholly out of touch with ordinary Americans. This is a durable impression—witness Bill Clinton’s effective deployment of it more than 20 years ago and its continued resonance during the 2012 campaign when Team Obama portrayed Mitt Romney as a plutocrat who delighted in shutting down factories and moving jobs overseas. Sure enough, in November exit polls, 81 percent of voters said that Barack Obama “cared for people like me”; a...

Hey, remember that awesome CPAC speech by Mitch McConnell? The one where Mitch McConnell said Â— and I quote Â— Â“Obamacare should be repealed root and branch. And weÂ’re not backing down from this fight.Â” And the same speech where Mitch McConnell also said, Â“This law is a disaster, and anybody who thinks weÂ’ve moved beyond it is dead wrong.Â” Well, as I told you, Mitch McConnell excels at saying one thing and doing another. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell voted to fund Obamacare. Hey Utah, he joined Orrin Hatch in doing so. Remember, just last year on the campaign trail Orrin...

Let me see if I understand this correctly. QE4 is announced and it was declared that bonds will be purchased for as long as the eye can see or until we achieve an unemployment rate of 6.5%. Several weeks later, the majority of Federal Reserve officials announced that it would be “appropriate” to end QE4 prior to the end of 2013 or by the end of 2013. So, what the heck happened to 6.5% unemployment? The Fed, for almost 100-years, has operated with two mandated objectives, namely stable prices and full employment. In order to achieve those goals, they can...

Did The Fed Lie About QE 3 And 4? Stock-Markets / Quantitative EasingJan 05, 2013 - 08:24 AM By: Graham Summers It’s common belief that Bernanke and the Fed are printing $85 billion per month ($40 billion to buy Mortgage Backed Securities and $45 billion to buy Treasuries). After all, these are the policies that the Fed announced in September and December 2012, respectively. The only issue with this is that the Fed lied. Today, the Fed’s balance sheet is $1.3 billion smaller than it was at this time last year. Last week it was $19 billion smaller. The largest...

This time I should’ve been the one listening. But listening can be tough sometimes when you’re an analyst and a commentator, and people around the country – listeners, readers, media, candidates, causes, businesses, etc. – come to you to find out why things are happening and what may happen next. Analysis and commentary is one of the few things in life I’m really good at. My car expertise begins and ends with changing a tire. Any toy that comes with the phrase “some assembly required” my kids immediately take to my wife. And when that much-anticipated Zombie apocalypse finally happens...

Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign. Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate. I appreciate that Mitt Romney was never a favorite of D.C.’s green-room crowd or, frankly, of many politicians. That’s why, a year ago, so few of those people thought that he would win the Republican nomination. But...

Could Mitt Romney save Hostess? Like him or not, if you have ever shopped at a Staples and/or Sports Authority, you have Mitt Romney and his Bain Capital buddies to thank. And now that Mr. Romney is not running — well anything, maybe he can shift his energy towards an endeavor greater than saving the nation from the “looming fiscal cliff” … and rescue my favorite cakes from extinction. Sure President Obama may have saved the auto-industry, but bring back Ho Ho’s, Sno-Balls and Wonder Bread and Virginia, Minnesota & Michigan become easy wins in the next presidential election. Wanna...

Now that Team Obama has opened up a debate on outsourcing â€” when they really mean offshoring â€” they may live to regret it. Theyâ€™ve been attacking Mitt Romney for having offshore bank accounts, but apparently didnâ€™t bother to vet their own team very well before doing so. Yesterday, the Weekly Standard reported that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has some funds in Swiss investment accounts, although that is more of an apple/oranges comparison: But disclosure forms reveal that in 2010, Wasserman Schultz invested between $1,001-$15,000 in a 401k retirement fund run by Davis Financial Fund. As the fund discloses,...

Are We Being Too Hard On John Roberts? OpinionJuly 5th, 2012 Ken Connor “Members of this court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation’s leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” -Chief Justice John Roberts in NFIB vs. Sebelius Conservatives are apoplectic that John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sided with the liberal wing...

When Barack Obama was just a baby, nuclear energy was touted as the technology that would finally provide pollution-free, limitless electricity for all. In its famous 1962 Port Huron Statement, the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society gushed about how “our monster cities…might now be humanized” thanks to nuclear power. Like so many predictions about the future, that one rather dramatically missed the mark. Surprising as it may seem, the United States still generates around 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. This despite the fact that no new facilities have been built since the notorious Three Mile...

. . . I get the strong sense from a few anecdotal stories about Roberts over the past few months and the way he has written this opinion that he very, very much was concerned about keeping the Supreme Court above the partisan fray and damaging the reputation of the Court long term. . . . Second, in writing his case, Roberts forces everyone to deal with the issue as a political, not a legal issue. . . Third, while Roberts has expanded the taxation power, which I don’t really think is a massive expansion from what it was, Roberts...

....But while Roberts may have saved Obama's signature domestic legislation — and perhaps his reelection campaign — by siding with the court's liberal wing, he actually did it in spite of Obama, not because of him. Roberts' opened his opinion today by declaring, unequivocally, that the individual mandate — which requires people to buy insurance or pay a penalty — is not constitutional under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. It's a direct shot at the Obama administration's defense of the law's constitutionality, which largely relied on those two clauses, which give Congress the power to regulate...

Obama is perhaps the most divisive President in modern U.S. history. The country is in severe economic crisis -- history books will someday call this the Obama Great Depression. Yet our President doesn’t see fit to deal with the economy in general. He doesn’t make big announcements to save Americans in general. He doesn’t have a plan to create jobs for all Americans. Because for Obama it isn't about America...or the economy...or jobs. It's all about cold, hard, heartless politics. Obama sees politics as divided by race. Everything he does is about division. Obama divides rich vs. poor (with his...

Sunday, Newt Gingrich will be on Meet the Press as a Romney surrogate. Tuesday, Newt will be campaigning with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump in Las Vegas. Could Romney be testing the Newt for VP waters? Nobody, gets TV news ratings like Gingrich. Nobody can be a campaign pitbull like Gingrich. Newt can sing many songs on TV news. The other GOP VP candidates are milk toast next to Newt. Is it possible?

“Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved.” – Bill Gates _____________________________ Dear Eduardo Saverin (if I may call you that), You were, as I’m sure you’re aware, born in Brazil to a wealthy family, and were moved to Miami when you were a child. To America, the land of opportunity. And boy, did you ever have a lot of opportunities. Your parents sent you to Harvard, where according to Wikipedia you “took advantage of Brazil’s lax insider trading...

Conservatives will be enthusiastic about the 2012 election, but only in a negative way because of grim danger of a second Obama term. Kerry, Gore, and Clinton were crummy politicians, but compared to the quiet malevolence of Obama, those Democrats were Boy Scouts. The problem with conservatives is that since Reagan left office, we have had nothing to vote for; George H. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain treated conservatives like barely tolerated stepchildren. Will the Republican presidential campaign this time be as condescending and dull? Mitt Romney, almost unnoticed, has done something no other Republican nominee...

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum wants to ensure the GOP's policy platform represents conservatives' interests. Newt Gingrich wants help retiring his campaign debt and repairing his reputation.Both Republicans are expected to endorse their former rival Mitt Romney — and signal to their backers to fall in line behind the party's presumptive nominee — but each wants assurances that Romney will deliver for them. Neither is rushing toward the task.Meanwhile, it doesn't appear that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is going to go that way. Paul is still in the race and hasn't yet recognized Romney as the party's nominee. The tea...

You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch You really are a heel. You’re as cuddly as a cactus, And as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch! You’re a bad banana, With a greasy black peel! You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch! Your heart’s an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders. You’ve got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch! Well, that’s a pretty good beginning at describing how most conservatives feel about Newt Gingrich these days. More of that later. Of course, many of us felt this way before the 2012 GOP presidential primary began, and have been vindicated as Newt...

I'll be glad to see Gingrich go. He has never done anything to advance our American condition except to inspire bile and national hostility and divisiveness. He sees all disagreement as war. His life in politics has been a shadow of Civil War regional hostility advanced to other strategies. To paraphrase Clausewitz: To Gingrich, politics is war by other means. He has brought a mini-dark age to conservatism. When Gingrich first brought his childish shutdown stunt to Congress, it brought new relevance to militias. Advancing Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s initiative, Gingrich helped turn aspects of Christian religion into a hostile...

Mitt Romney would be wise to take a good hard look at what Rick Santorum did right and what he did wrong during his campaign. In his quest to unseat President Obama, Romney will face some of the same challenges Santorum faced. Back in the summer of 2011, nobody thought Santorum had a shot at the Republican nomination. Nationally, he was polling at about 3 percent. But through sheer hard work and persistence, he won the Iowa caucus and was catapulted into the big time. There are many lessons to be learned from Santorum's political journey, beginning with having a...

Just when everyone was settling down for another month (at least) of borderline primary season tedium, it happened. Rick Santorum announced that, after one of the most surprisingly successful primary campaigns in recent memory, he was suspending his run for the Republican nomination to be President of the United States. What was behind this sudden about turn from the conservative who was closest to pushing Mitt Romney for victory? Well it has to be said that the decision seems largely to have been made on personal grounds. With his three year old daughter, Bella, having been hospitalised last week, noted...